62 NELSON
ripened steadily, being founded on something
more than " esteem.55 But it was an unfortunate
love because it could only find complete expres-
sion by defying the legal and cultural dictates
of the age. Nelson was a man of genius ; not
the genius of the creative artistj but the genius
of action. He was obsessed by ideas of naval
honour and glory, and supported by unsurpassed
professional capacity. In action he possessed
Incredible elan. He had what to-day we call the
manic drive. With this, as is often the case,
went morbidity and sensitiveness, for which he
required praise and soothing as a cure. He
arrived at Naples wounded and fever-stricken,
longing for the praise and justification so long
denied him, and found al he wanted in Emma
and more besides. He found one of the most
striking women in Europe, brought up amidst
every conceivable form of poverty and degrada-
tion, transported like a slave-girl to Naples,
married to an elderly dilletante and now made
the First English Lady at one of Europe's gayest
wartime courts. Here was the incomparable
figure portrayed by Romney, welcoming and
applauding him and intoxicating him with her
presence. To Emma, Nelson appeared the
embodiment of all that was heroic and noble in
an Englishman, at a court where despite its
gaiety and splendour the threat of impending
danger hung very heavily.
"Biographers of the last century engulfed by the
puritanism which Nelson himself so frequently
approved, have described Emma as "vulgar"
and " of very humble origin and disreputable
antecedents.53 If only Nelson could have had a